waterlilies

DEEP IN THE LOCHAN

Acrylic and linen on a deep cradled panel, 40 x 40 x 5.5 cm, 2022

This one has the Gaelic words for waterlily scratched into the paint, and a patch of linen underneath. Duilleag-bhaite which means drowned leaf, and bhan is white. I am fascinated by the idea of a wilderness full of lily ponds. Of the hummocky glaciated ground and the Lewisian Gneiss under it riddled with dyke swarms in straight lines, lochans and small hills and pockets of bog. I am also trying to make brush marks which fly over the surface, using the brush taped to a cane much more lightly than I have before.

WATERLILY LOCHAN

Acrylic and gold mica flakes on canvas, 61 x 61 x 4 cm, 2022

This is one of those paintings that looked gorgeous when just finished and then the next day flat and boring, So I had to work on it with layers of glazing on some more translucent blues – pthalo, ultramarine, and deep Australian blue – with some black too. and then the gold mica flakes are specks floating on the surface.

In Assynt in the summer the many little lakes (lochan) on the hummocky Lewisian Gneiss are full of wild waterlilies.